Recently, in the market of color photographic materials, with the shortening the time for delivery of finished color products and the reduction of laboratory work, it has been desired to reduce the processing time for color photographic materials. For shortening the times for various processing steps of color photographic materials, it has been typical to increase the processing temperature and the amounts of replenishers, and it has also been proposed to increase stirring during processing, add various accelerators, etc.
In particular, in the processing process for color photographic material having a reflective support, the processing step itself for the color photographic material is shortened and the processing steps are generally completed, after color development, by a bleach-fix (or blix) step and a wash and/or stabilization step.
However, it has been found that in the shortened process involving reducing the number of processing steps or shortening each processing time described above, and, in particular, in the shortened process wherein the time for blix step is shorter than about 1 minute and the time for washing and/or stabilization is shorter than about 2 minutes, there occurs a new problem that the processed color photographic materials suffer the increase of the formation of stain in the case of continuous processing. Also, the aforesaid problem is particularly severe in the case of practicing a water saving process as the case of greatly reducing the amount of water for wash step, etc. Such a stain is particularly visually perceivable in reflective color photographic materials, including color photographic papers, and hence the increase of the formation of stain inevitably results in severe problems in the case of such color photographic materials.
From the facts that the aforesaid stain is removed by rewashing the color photographic material once processed, the formation of stain can be prevented by sufficiently prolonging the time for washing, etc., and stain does not form when a fresh color developer is used, it is thought that the occurrence of stain is based on the insufficient washing out of the oxidized components of color developer attached to the color photographic materials.
In an attempt to increase the rate of color development of color developing solutions, various methods have hitherto been proposed. In particular, there have been proposed various additives for accelerating penetration of a color developing agent into coupler-containing oil droplets, where the color developing agent finally undergoes coupling with the coupler to form a dye. Among these additives, benzyl alcohol known to produce a particularly great effect in color formation acceleration, and has been employed for processing of various types of color photographic lightsensitive materials, and is still used widely for processing of color papers.
Since benzyl alcohol has poor solubility, though it is soluble in water to some extent, diethylene glycol, triethylene glycol, or an alkanolamine may be employed in combination to increase the solubility.
Further, various preservatives and chelating agents have been investigated for improving the stability of color developer. For example, as preservatives, there are provided aromatic polyhydroxy compounds described in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 49828/77, 160142/84, 47038/81 (the term "OPI" as used herein refers to a "published unexamined Japanese patent application"), etc., and U.S. Pat. No. 3,746,544, etc., hydroxycarbonyl compounds described in U.S. Pat. 3,615,503, British Pat. No. 1,306,176, etc., .DELTA.-aminocarbonyl compounds described in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 143020/77, 89425/78, etc., alkanolamines described in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 3532/79, etc., metal salts described in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 44148/82, 53749/82, etc. Also, as chelating agents, there are provided aminopolycarboxylic acids described in Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 30496/73, 30232/69, etc., organic phosphonic acids described in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 97347/81, Japanese Patent Publication No. 39359/81, West German Pat. No. 2,227,639, etc., phosphonocarboxylic acids described in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 102726/77, 42730/78, 121127/79, 126241/80, 65956/80, etc., and compounds described in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 195845/83 and 203440/83, Japanese Patent Publication No. 40900/78, etc.
However, when the aforesaid compounds are added to an ordinary color developer containing benzyl alcohol for developing reflective color photographic materials, it has not yet been possible to fully sufficiently prevent the occurrence of stain when processing in a very short period of time although some effect may be obtained according to the nature of the compounds.